When it comes to running our country and even our personal lives, it often looks like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. In my young, angry, cynical days, the first multi-syllable word I learned was hypocrite, to describe the difference between what the people in my world said and what they did. I also became fond of portraying myself and the world as the blind leading the blind. When I finally realized I create my own reality from what I choose to believe, I stopped feeling sorry for myself and started paying attention to how my thoughts create my reality. From that moment on, life has taken on new meaning!

The problem lies in how discriminating we are in choosing what to believe. Too often we don’t choose our beliefs, we simply accept the ideas and perceptions reality hands down to us through our parents, friends, teachers, religions and governments, with little or no question. Look at how much time and energy we spend reacting to life, and how little time and energy we spend examining the beliefs that create our life. For example, if we buy into the belief that we’re all separate and there’s not enough of what we want or need to go around, we’ll create a world dominated by fear, competition and violence. If we believe in oneness and sharing, we’ll create a world where love, partnership and peace prevail. In simpler terms, if we believe we’re bad, we’ll act bad. If we believe we can’t trust ourselves, we’ll create external value systems and give them authority to command and control our behavior. In other words, how we define ourselves and the world around us forms our intent, which, in turn, forms our reality.

During the course of everyday events we often forget the role of thoughts in the forging of our material reality. We get lost in the visible symbols, the material by-products of our imaginations, forgetting the invisible blueprints from which they, and we, emerge.

Pure energy like money, its material equivalent, is shaped into matter and experience by thought. It can be used to lift up or smash down, to build character or destroy character, to express love or express hate, to beautify or make ugly.

The purpose, or challenge, of life is to learn how to use thought in its various forms to shape energy into a pleasing reality. The prize is a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of a job well done. And, like learning to walk or talk, it is a personal, subjective endeavor that requires creative aggression. It is a great balancing act, where one must accept falling down in the course of learning how to stand up.

Remember:

Thoughts are “things” with a reality of their own and you an artist. With thoughts in the forms of belief, attitude, value and expectation you paint the landscape of your life.

Create a great day!

By letting ourselves get lost in our creations, we lose control of them.

When we let external events, the by-products of our beliefs and imagination, capture too much of our attention, we end up reacting to life (become the victims of it), instead of being the conscious creators of it. Creating a life, like learning to walk, talk or drive a car, requires attention to detail. As individuals, we make life safe for ourselves and others by consciously thinking and acting in ways that are life supportive, not life destructive.

This is a question we all need to ask ourselves, whether we’re rich or poor, young or old, male or female, black or white, Christian or Muslim. We need to put our imaginations to work for us, not let them work against us by wallowing in fear, self-pity and self-doubt.

We helped create this reality and we have the power to create a different reality!

We will not be free and we will not experience peace until we transform our fear into love. We’re afraid of death, we’re afraid of ourselves and others, we’re afraid on loneliness, we’re afraid of pain, of being wrong, of having the wrong look, attitude, values, and on and on. We’re afraid so many things, yet, what do we do about it? Too often we let our fears feed on themselves instead of facing them, understanding them and moving through them. The worst thing that can happen to us is that we’re going to die some day, somehow. If we stop to think about it, we realize that our minds and bodies prepare us for death. There comes a time in life when everyone realizes they’d rather die than live. That leaves us with the question, in what condition do we want to leave the world when it comes time for us to go? Do we want to leave it knowing we didn’t do the best we could to preserve the world’s future and integrity for those left behind and those yet to come? That’s like being a dysfunctional parent, teacher, politician, or business leader and not striving to become a better person or do a better job.

To have hope, we must not only believe in ourselves, we must be honest with ourselves. If we could only see how amazing we are, how amazing all of life is, we could change reality in an instant. We are not bad! It is our ideas about who we are and what reality is that are bad.

Many of us think of ourselves as children because the bible tells us we’re children, the “children” of God. We think we’re bad because the bible (and sometimes our own parents) tells us we are. We think we can’t trust ourselves and one another because the built-in drives that support our biological survival (sex, hunger and safety), are too strong for us to control. As a young child, being told in Catholic School that I was born in sin because Adam and Eve ate an apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, was devastating. It made me angry. It was guilt by association. The nun then said, “and you can’t trust the flesh (your body) because it will always betray you.”

Telling ourselves we’re basically bad and we can’t trust ourselves is like throwing a monkey wrench into a machine or a poison pill into our drinking water. Ideas like these are destructive and based on fear, fear of the creative force within each one of us. They rob us of the power and authority to think for ourselves and give it to designated “authorities” in our religious and secular institutions.

We get what we concentrate on, we see what we look for.

If we look for evidence to support the idea that we’re basically bad, we’ll find it, or manufacture it. If we think we can’t trust ourselves, we’ll find evidence in our, or someone else’s, behavior to justify this belief. If we believe we’re “children”, we’ll refuse to take full responsibility for our behavior. If we believe we’re separate and there’s not enough of what we want or need to go around, we’ll lie, cheat, manipulate and abuse one other, even unto death. We’ll also buy into ideas like “survival of the fittest, dog eat dog” and “devil take the hindmost,” predatory concepts we see dramatized in life, work and art every day.

It’s time for us to wake up! We need to stop being hypnotized by the excitement, drama and demands of the material world. We need to be still long enough to look inward and examine the ideas we accept as beliefs, ideas that serve as the invisible blueprint, the building blocks for the creation of our reality. When all is said and done, we are held responsible for who we are and what we do. That makes us the ultimate “Deciders” when it comes to how we live our personal lives. When our kids grow up, they are held responsible for who they are and what they do. If we are to be held accountable for our actions in every way then we need to take full responsibility for what we choose to believe and not let ourselves accept ideas from family, friends, society or its institutions without challenge or question.

We are not human beings have a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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